Rakshasa

The Cursed Thesis

I never imagined I'd end up writing this. For over twenty years, I've taught Ancient History at Islamabad National University. My life's work has been debunking myths, unraveling legends, showing students how stories shift depending on who holds power. I was never a believer. Not in gods. Not in demons. And yet now... I'm afraid to close my eyes. It all started in the most mundane way possible: with a doctoral dissertation. Salman Khan was one of my best students. Quiet, precise, a voracious reader. When he asked me to advise his final project, I agreed without hesitation. His proposal intrigued me—a comparative study of the Rakshasa figure in Vedic mythology versus modern Punjabi folklore. Ambitious but manageable. Demon folklore always fascinates academics, especially when it can be reinterpreted as political or cultural symbolism. The research progressed normally. Until Salman started withdrawing. First, he stopped attending our in-person meetings. Claimed he was working in the South Asian Studies Institute archives, where they'd granted him special access to ancient manuscripts. Then his emails grew increasingly erratic. One referenced a Sanskrit text that 'described in detail the flesh and breath of those who feed on souls.' Another said he'd felt 'a presence' while copying symbols from the manuscript. I chalked it up to stress. Nothing unusual for a PhD candidate obsessed with his topic. But something felt... off. Then one night, an email arrived. The subject line read: 'Don't open this if you're alone.' I hesitated... left my computer while I made tea and collected myself... but curiosity got the better of me. I returned to my cluttered inbox and found that message again...

The Revelation

Of course, I ignored the warning. I opened the attachment. It was a scanned image of a manuscript fragment on vellum. Deteriorated, but clearly showing a symbol I'd never seen—three intersecting lines like twisted branches, with what resembled an eye at the center. Not a normal eye. Malformed. With a pupil slit vertically like a cat's. The email contained just one line: 'Don't look at it too long.' I felt ridiculous goosebumps. Blamed it on exhaustion. Closed my laptop and went to bed. That night, I first dreamed of teeth. Teeth biting me. The following days grew... confusing. Salman stopped answering calls and emails. When I inquired at the Institute, they said no one had seen him in over a week. I re-examined the manuscript image. Tried tracing its origins. Compared the symbols to Vedic glyphs, marginal tantras, even early Brahmi script. No matches. The style vaguely resembled Gupta-era work, but... something felt wrong about the strokes. As if the scribe knew things no one should know. Then I started feeling watched in my own home. Heard footsteps outside my door at night. One morning, my office lamp lay shattered on the floor, the wood beneath it scorched. I considered calling the police—but what would I say? That a missing student sent me a weird image and now I'm spooked? Then the library incident happened. A night-shift student was found unconscious by the anthropology section. Claimed he'd seen a tall figure with elongated arms sniffing him from behind the shelves. Didn't remember passing out. The administration blamed drugs. I knew better. That same night, I found an unmarked envelope in my office mailbox. Inside: another manuscript page. This one had blood along the edges. And on the back, a clumsily scrawled Urdu phrase: 'It wasn't sleeping. Just waiting for someone to say its name.' I'm beginning to think Salman said its name. I'm beginning to think he woke it up. This isn't folklore anymore. Not symbolism. Not myth. There's something in Islamabad. Something hungry. And I think it's seen me.

The Hunger Awakens

I didn't sleep that night. Or the next. First came the small things. Sounds that didn't belong. A faint buzzing—like faulty wiring—right before the lights flickered. Windows fogging from the inside despite the heat. One morning, wet tracks led from the kitchen to my bedroom. I told myself I was being paranoid. But I wasn't becoming paranoid. I already was. Returning to campus, I found the gates open too early. No guard in the booth. No one in the Humanities building. Like a Sunday, but it was Wednesday. My third-floor office appeared untouched... until I noticed the bottom drawer of an old filing cabinet slightly ajar. Inside, among yellowed index cards: a folder labeled 'Salman Khan' in handwriting I recognized—but shakier, denser. The contents chilled me. Field notes mixed with frantic repetitions. Some pages stained with ink... or something thicker.

Realizations

I lost track of time reading those pages. One sheet showed the manuscript symbol drawn obsessively in margins. Another had a warning in block letters: 'DON'T SPEAK THE NAME. NOT EVEN IN THOUGHT.' And below, in resigned script: 'If you're reading this, it's already in you too.' I stood with trembling hands. The office had grown unnaturally cold. As I left, I swear I heard a whisper—a word in no language I know. That night, I slept in my car outside a closed shopping mall, heart pounding like something chased me. Next morning, campus security found the night janitor dead in the basement. They called it a heart attack. But the details unsettled me—eyes wide, pupils dilated, one finger extended as if trying to write in the concrete floor. No dust. Just blood forming an incomplete spiral. This isn't about a thesis anymore. Not about folklore. This is a warning. Something's been unleashed. And I think it's using me to see.

The Fracture

When I came to, the chat window had vanished. My phone screen showed only darkness... and a reflection that wasn't quite mine. I don't remember typing the last message... I was home. The door stood open. Or maybe it had never fully closed. My laptop glowed on the desk. A new unnamed file appeared—marked only with this symbol: 𐑒𐑕𐑙 I opened it without thinking. Or without wanting to think. A video. Just seconds long... Untitled. Unsourced. Undeletable. With headphones on, brightness maxed, I watched. The shaky footage showed a room with walls cracked unnaturally. Wet breathing filled the audio—something too close to the mic. The camera moved without visible hands. Something blurred darted across the frame... malformed... I recognized the location. Maybe I'd been the one filming. And that figure... whether Rakshasa or what remained of Salman, I couldn't tell...

I couldn't restart the computer after shutting it down. That night, I slept on the floor. Not from exhaustion. From gravity. Like the ground was the last real thing left. I stopped teaching. Stopped searching for Salman. Some mornings, I wake to find new words carved into the mattress edges. Not my doing. But the handwriting is mine. One reads: 'What was summoned doesn't want to leave. It wants to move through.' Another, in darker letters: 'These words weren't written. They were remembered.' Today my gums bled again. I know what that means. It will smell me soon. And this time... I won't look away. An ending? Or just the last crack.